Diva Challenge #122 Grid (Un)locked

Golly, it feels like I haven't tangled (or wrangled) in days! We had some wicked storms come through, and for some reason all of last week was just hard on me sleep-wise so I didn't really do much art.

Well, I colored the Birds On A Wire alien pear thing, and I painted an abstract (not posted) with my watercolor pencils that I intended for a tangle background, but that's about it. Plus the b-o-s-s returned from his three-week overseas trip, meaning no more daytangling. (Phooey.) Plus, there is a full-time jay-oh-bee in another department that needed my resume. (Benefits? More $$? Hold me back!!!)

But tonight, I tangled. Whoo-hoo!

Here's my belated submission for Diva Challenge #122. I really love how this progressed. Maybe taking a few days off of tangling was good for me.

Grid seeds used: J3, I4, H4, A1, C3, B3, and a couple of A1's that
I kind of messed up, so they became something new.

Diva Challenge #121 WIP

Is this term used outside of the knitter/weaver/fiber world? WIP means Work In Progress. (UFO means UnFinished Object.) 

Well, this is my ZIA WIP. I'm posting it in its half-finished state to try to make it into the slideshow. (It's cool... I don't mind if it's not done. I still like what I have so far.) It kind of looks like an alien fruit pod.

The tangling was done first. But it's not done. I wanted to see if the color guided the rest of the tangles. So I added color, with my Derwent Inktense pencils. Given that I only have a small set of 12, my color options were limited and when water is applied they brighten considerably (which I love).

But my background is lost. (It's there. Very faint.) Ah, technique. I never was much for watercolors, preferring oils (they smell SOOOO much better). 

Anyway, here it is. I'll post updates as I go. And now I must get started on #122 before the storm hits and I have to change my name to Dorothy. (Cue Flying Monkeys.)

Be safe, y'all.

Tangles used so far: Birds on a Wire, Flux, Flukes, Florz, and Fescu.

Spotsadots/Orbyt, Diva Challenge Fail

I got so distracted this week that I totally forgot to do my Diva Challenge submission. Inspiration struck--I wanted to create a ZIA, a bit larger than the tiles are, and color it with my Inktense pencils.

Bigger = longer worktime. Given that I started it Saturday afternoon, it became obvious a couple of hours in that I wouldn't make the evening deadline for the Challenge. I set it aside. I don't want to rush this. Plus, I started in without having any idea how "waterproof" the Microns are, or how the inktense would work over top of it, yadda yadda. (I tend to dive in headlong then backpedal when I hit turbulence.)

So it's on hold, but here is what I have so far:

Tangles used so far: Birds On a Wire, Florz, Flux, Fescu, Flukes.

Today, I decided that experimenting with my media might be a good idea. On a scrap of Strathmore Wet Media paper, I made marks with all of my different Sakuras (Brushes in colors, greys, and Microns in Sepia/Black) along with the new water-soluble graphite pencil I got recently (never used one before). Then I washed Inktense over it.

Good news. Those suckers are water-tight. Not even a consideration of bleeding.

Then, I laid out a few different colors of Inktense, washed it with water, blended, dried with a hair dryer on low, washed a bit more, dried, then tangled randomly over top of it.

Then, as will happen, I started getting too "into it", and before you know it, I had a full-on tangle going. It's interesting to note that Micron on dry raw Wet Media paper is kind of rough and scratchy, but Micron over an Inktense wash is smooth as silk.

I tried shading with pencil--doesn't quite have the depth necessary over the ink wash, and the paper is too toothy for a nice application of pencil. Even going up to a 7B didn't help.

I pulled out my brand-new Pastel Pencils (another thing I've never used) with the idea of touching up Hollibaugh with white--and I loved the effect. The pastels also glide smoothly over the ink-washed sections as well as the raw parts.

Using the color theory I learned in my oil painting classes from Dennis Wojtkiewicz, a man who is an absolute genius when it comes to photorealistic renditions of things, I applied a little of the color opposite to the washes to give it pop, then laid over more white to lighten it up. (Sidenote: for the greens, a pink is the opposite--tint of red; and for blues, peach/flesh--tint of orange.) I also found the darker pastels used in shadow areas help it pop.

So here's the result of my experiment, which produced what I believe to be a new tangle pattern (below). (Note to self: try working not so close to the edge of the paper!)

Tangles used: Hollibaugh, Tipple, Amaze, Flux, Fescu,
Finery, a really bad attempt at Paradox, and what I hope
is my own tangle, Orbyt (Spotsadots).

Now for the pattern. I originally called it Spotsadots and submitted it as that, but I think I prefer to call it Orbyt. Too many "S" names already, and it reminds me of planets. (Thoughts?) I sent word to Linda at Tangle Patterns.

I've looked in as many references as I can find, and though it bears some resemblance to both Bubbles and Sooflowers, I think it's different enough to be its own tangle. (If you've seen this before, please let me know. It's important to me to be authentic and original.) So I submitted it to TanglePatterns.com for review. Cross your fingers.

Orbyt (Spotsadots), by me.

Diva Challenge #120: Bales of Bales

The bales I usually wrangle with are of hay, when I help out with feeding the horses at the boarding barn. This week, I've been wrangling Bales, the tangle pattern, for the Diva's 120th Challenge. (Is that only 120 this year, or 120 altogether? Must find out).

The premise is to create a monotangle using only variations on the Bales pattern. (Mono = one.) It's simple, but there it is. Bales within Bales.

Two Bales tangleations, dwelling within one iteration
of an aura-eated Bales.

And that's that. It's been a long, lonely week at work, what with only two professors teaching classes, and everyone else on vacation, and the boss (department chair) overseas for another week or so, plus it's summer session. So I try to stay occupied, handling what comes in, tangling or reading on the Kindle I borrowed from the university library.

I've finished two of the three Hunger Games Trilogy already and am 1/3rd through the final book. Yep. It's been THAT quiet. Thank goodness the thing came pre-loaded with 100 titles, of both classic and contemporary fiction/non-fiction with a whole bunch of "things I've been meaning to read".

All right. Posted, blogged, back to "Mockingjay".